Full Description
Boston is a city known for its sports as well as its troubled racial conflict. But generations of Black athletes, teams, sportswriters, and front-office executives have exercised historic influence in Boston over the years as they advocated for racial integration and transformed their sports into modes of racial pride, resistance, and cultural expression. Race and Resistance in Boston goes beyond the familiar topics associated with the city's premiere professional teams, the Red Sox and the Celtics, to recount the long history of Black sporting culture in the city.
This collection takes a close look at Black Bostonians' involvement in sports as varied as soccer, cricket, boxing, baseball, golf, tennis, basketball, and hockey-and illuminates the effect of Boston's desegregation and busing crisis on scholastic athletics in the 1970s and 1980s. With personal reminiscences from former New England Patriot Devin McCourty and journalist Bijan Bayne, as well as research from scholars of sport, Race and Resistance in Boston captures the intersection of Black history and sporting culture in America's City on a Hill.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Devin McCourty
Introduction
Robert Cvornyek and Douglas Stark
Part I Framing Race, Community, and Resistance in Boston
1 Integration in Sport: How Busing Reshaped Athletic Talent by Bijan Bayne
2 An Opening Conversation: Black Activism in Boston Sports by Joseph Cooper
3 The Middle Lane: Race, Sports, Boston, Hoops, and Community by Marcis Fennell, C. Keith Harrison, and Kelly Dwyer
Part II Legitimacy in the Jim Crow Era
4 Gentlemen of Color: Oliver and Fred Watson and New England Black Soccer by Brian Bunk and Ed Farnsworth
5 In Pursuit of the Boundary: Cricket in Boston's West Indian Community, 1900 to 1950 by Violet Showers Johnson
6 Black Eyes: A History of Race in the Boston PrizeRing by Andrew Smith
7 The Color of Baseball: Race and Boston's Sporting Community by Robert Cvornyek
8 Covering Race and Sports in Boston: The Pioneering Work of Mabray "Doc" Kountze by Donna L. Halper
9 Pioneers of African American Golf at the Crossroads: The 1941 Negro National Open Golf Championship Tournament in Boston, Massachusetts by Marvin Dawkins and Jomills Henry Braddock II
Part III Power and Performance in the Freedom Movement
10 Center of Controversy: Bill Russell and Boston by Aram Goudsouzian
11 Willie O'Ree: The Sky's the Limit by George Fosty
12 Zero Love: The Intersection of Race and Class in Boston Tennis by Sundiata Djata
13 Darling and the Dyke: Differing receptions in the coming-out of Jason Collins and Brittney Griner by Jamie Loke
14 The Enduring Sounds of Whiteness: Boston Sports Radio and Race by Donna L. Halper
15 Act as If: Alison Feaster, the Politics of Inclusion, and Achieving the American Dream in the National Basketball Association by Eileen Narcotta-Welp and Lis Erickson
Afterword
Shifting the Focus: Balancing Sports Commemoration and Race by Kathryn Leann Harris
Contributors
